The addition of an extra second between Saturday and Sunday to account for the slowing rotation of the Earth affected flight check-ins in Australia, and hit popular websites including Yelp and Foursquare. By Charles Arthur

On the dot of midnight, as 1999 became 2000, all sorts of bad things were supposed to happen. Computers would malfunction, planes would fall out of the sky and cities would be plunged into darkness. None did. The first few days of the new century - if such it is - have all been about grappling with older and rather more tangible problems, such as finding hospital beds for intensive care patients and enough staff to treat them.

The 60,000 City workers due at their desks this weekend to ensure the smooth running of the Square Mile through the Y2K bug danger period took heart last night as New Zealand, Australia and other financial centres in eastern time zones reported no major systems problems.

On December 31, Japanese people traditionally clean the old year's dirt from the house, tuck into a midnight bowl of noodles and then head to the nearest shrine or temple to make their first prayer of the year.

The millennium bug could wreak havoc with the economies of developing countries, slashing growth, pushing up inflation and triggering large-scale capital flight, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday.

Lying 'bleeding' on a stretcher, Bibi van der Zee finds out first hand how one of London's top hospitals would cope if there was a major train crash on New Year's Eve. Did she survive the simulation? Read on...

The world's airlines have been given the green light to fly to any destination over the millennium because there is no threat that computers will break down and the industry is confident that air traffic control systems will be bug-free.

It's almost as if we need millennial fears. First, there were the doom-laden warnings about a worldwide computer crash; then about the collapse of air-traffic control systems and planes falling out of the sky; then about economic disaster because nobody wanted to give up their party to work on millennium night.